Cut your butter knife through the lump of iron

There is a fountain of happiness inside. It lies dormant under the self-imposed crust of fears, illusions, assumptions and ignorance. You have to unearth it. You have to remove the burdensome crust which weighs you down like a beast of burden. You just pull ahead like a coal and soot laden steam engine, lifelessly, mechanically. You have to realize you are more than a beast of burden and a steam engine. Pierce through the crust’s increasing thickness. You have to dig deeper. Stop, take rest and get a sense of what you are doing. Again you have to pick up your pickaxe. You cannot afford too much rest. Rest lies at the destination. There it is a factor of eternity. Once you reach there, running and resting will become the same. Hit hard. Let its iron run deep into the earthen wall that separates you from you real potential, your destiny, your destination for which Mother Nature has shaped and nurtured you. Dig deep. Look within. Life isn’t worth living just as a series of accidental occurrences bobbing you like a wooden wreck tossed by stormy waves. It’s about calculated, well planned steps and moves. Steer the ship well. You were born to master it, just keep it in mind. With knowledge and information you can move on the crust only. It’s just living accidentally. Wisdom helps you dig deep. There is a source of your real happiness. It doesn’t require a sprint on the outer crust. You will just head-but other runners, fall in the dust and grit your bloody teeth. After all, it’s just a stampede. Break through the outer shell. It needs some guts to begin with, but then at later stages it is like you are cutting butter with a knife. You will have the passage to your real self. It will be an escape route from the mindless race. Just dive into it. Below lies the tranquil sea, your own unchartered waters. You are the owner of this infinite depths and cool currents spreading in countless directions. You can drift anywhere. Just imagine the freedom. Claim your freedom. You were not born to be slave. Go, do it!

Shaping the wooden crate of my destiny

He was busy hammering the wood. Tonk, tonk, phutt, phutt, buuum, buuum. Lot of noise. I was crying foul. He Himself winced with unbearable pain as I cried foul and blamed Him for being so merciless and unkind. God but was doing His duty. He has to have smile and the tears in each of His hands, for they lose their meaning in the absence of each other. It’s all blame game on Him and little appreciation. God was putting down nails into my wooden being to shape the box of my destiny. I am an undefined dead wood with His woodwork. Making is painful and laborious. It’s not a cakewalk. So I kept on crying with pain and cursed Him for his mercilessness. Making is a highly painful buddy. It draws blood and fetches tears and remorse even in His heart for being so accepting to the painful side of existence. He but cannot remove pain from universe because then pleasure will lose its meaning.  He cannot chuck out darkness, for light will become meaningless. But believe me every nail writes the script of many-many pleasant moments in future. Love your struggle. Accept your pains. Be a bit kind to yourself when you fail. Only a fall carries the full measure of a rise. See through your tears at the impending victory waiting at a distance. Love your labour on the hot sands of your destiny because these are the milestones which will define and make your victory meaningful and worth it.

Killing with one hand, saving with the other

How precious is a new-born life! It’s more precious than anything else on the earth. You cannot find anything to weigh equal in the opposite pan. Nothing matters more than the survival of a new-born. It becomes the primary cause. You become its sky and earth, sheltering this water bubble to keep its shiny film of time-dome reflecting in your eyes. There it merges with your dreams and your dreams rush out into the broad daylight to shake hands with your destiny. You cup your hands over it to save its feeble light from going off even by the slightest whiff of air. Look at the way the little signs of life in a just born, so fragile, weak and soft, are picked up and held to heart with so much love, care and affection! You hold the tiny seed, so small that it can be blown away by a little whish of air from the mouth, and see it growing into a big banyan. It becomes larger and more important than you, nourished by the dewy showers of your heart, honey-sweet sips of your emotions and defended by the ramparts of your protectiveness. A new-born clings to survival like it is held to life just by an invisible string of a cobweb, which may snap at the slightest carelessness. So we dreamily hold dear life like dreams spread on our eyelashes. It’s our own image we hold, our chance to survive in the future, a continuation of our journey, a furtherance of our hopes, aspirations, passions and the culmination of all our struggles. It’s a reward for all our perspiring work. It’s the medicine for all the ailments which plague us. A child, a new life, is a symbol of our belief in the freshness and meaningfulness of the journey, the great art of doing, of making, the story of continuing the march. That’s how we nurture a new life. If not for this instinct, no child will ever survive. After all, it’s such a tiny lamp and the storms are so strong. Why is it that once that very life grows up, we grow so apathetic to it that its decimation and destruction hardly counts as anything more than a routine news item? Why killing becomes more expected and natural than saving lives? Why are there more people ready to kill, than eager to save lives? It’s the futile game of doing and undoing. Just making and then breaking. It’s the mad, crazy force that has kept us to the level of mere struggling pack of humans who are as miserable like they were thousands of years ago. It is the bondage that holds us back, stopping us from becoming superhuman, which was otherwise our destination given the beginning we had in the loveable most and caring hands. But we first do and then undo. The nasty cycle of creating and destroying. A part of us is making, and the majority is involved in destroying. And we remain where we started from. We nurture new life like the dearest jewel to the self, and then we get busy in the mad frenzy to kill and destroy those very dear lives. It’s self annihilation. It’s like raising crops with all the care and then cut, reap and harvest.   

Laugh at the load on your head

When life screws you up from many angles, and despite best of your efforts, and all the humanly possible tries, you find the situation unchanging, you can still fight for a change! The ray of light is never lost. It lurks somewhere. All you need is to look earnestly. And there is a very easy solution. All it requires is a change in yourself, the carrier of all this unjustified shitty load! You can make yourself physically stronger. In plain and simple terms, physically stronger. If the load carrier becomes stronger, the load becomes lighter. It is like a person suffering under 100 kg weight. And come whatever may, he cannot unburden himself of this load. What is the option left? It is just to get physically stronger so that it is possible to carry this load. I’m talking of plain physical strength! Forget about all other hypothetical versions of strength like mental strength and all, these are just derivatives of the basic skeleton of our body. Physical strength is the prelude to all other concepts of strength. So all you guys and girls, who are undeservedly carrying extra load in life, and cannot put it off your head, just sweat it out. Grow strong physically for your load! Then you can even laugh at the weight on your head!

Why do I want to read The Satanic Verses and Reminiscences from the Nehru Era?

The day when I would feel completely free, being totally satisfied with the Indian democracy, will be when I will enter a bookstore, go to the display to pick up The Satanic Verses and Reminiscences from the Nehru Era, walk out proudly and safely, openly flaunting my right to knowledge and information, reach my study and immerse myself in these books, share the experience with others later, and still be safe over a cup of coffee at a public place. This, to me, is the hallmark of a vibrant democracy and an open society. It’s not that I’m a scandal-monger or somebody interested in pickled sweet-sour version of things and people. I’m just curious like children are about a world far bigger than their understanding and imagination. I just want an opportunity to peel off the mask and look at the dermis to know a bit more interesting, meaningful things below the epidermis. The things that are routine and popular and are sort of conventional come along a well-contrived effort by individuals, teams and organizations in building up that particular image. It’s about personas, organizations and religions. I want The Satanic Verses to be available at all bookstores in India. Not that I am speaking as a Hindu rightist or somebody suffering from Islamophobia. I respect Islam as much as I do my own religion, or for that matter any religion on the planet. But beyond divinity and messenger of God, I want to know the role of humans in shaping a particular belief system. The Satanic Verses takes you to the life and times when Islam originated. The very same applies to Reminiscences from the Nehru Era. I’m not interested in the colorful lives of the King and Queen of free India. But by having a craving for the real behind the scene lives of Nehru and Indira, I want to see how much of ourselves, we the common Indians, gets reflected on the ones who led us for so many years. During these days of free speech and information, I am just eager to use my right to information and mischievously peek behind the curtains to see how the mighty people drop their guards to be humans like us. Those escapades and naughty surrenders to the basic instinct certainly leave me water-mouthed.

Fire-pitted souls

This one is for those who daily put their physical selves in the furnace to earn survival morsels--the laborers, peasants, daily wage earners, artisans, roadside vendors, etc. Their whole body sheds sweaty tears day in and day out. So the salty sea of miseries pours out through the thick walls of their rough skin. It rarely finds an outlet through eyes! Why? Because these are glassy hard balls--the fiery pits where dreams, tears, hopes and humanity get burnt incessantly! Hunger always staring in the face. Most of the common realities just wildest dreams. Every walk a struggle to survive. Every smile just a shadow of pain. A wish to earn an extra penny in whatever you do, think, say or plan. There is no respite. Hunger becomes your shadow, always with you, your companion. After a time you become used to it, get addicted to it. The starving shadow becomes the self. You love it more than even the self. The personality becomes a hard-knotted dead wood. A dark hole which sucks its own light. A vacuum which sucks in air. A life that eats itself to appear more like death. An emptiness that chucks away any space needed for a normal self. Yaa, poverty makes one almost sub-human, a different species. Is one life-time sufficient to escape its clutches? You become a brute like the bull snorting, pulling the cart, staring on the road, tearing the hooves, taking one step after the other. You cannot look up and see this wide, spacious world. Your vision is limited to the grains in the sands around your feet which you have to pick up and eat to survive another day. There was no past, just like there is no present, and exactly like there will be no future. Well, where to go and what to do!?

The coy, dove-eyed slaughterer

Do you think violence is basically about breaking heads, firing bullets, stabbing knives, blood, wounds, injuries, sticks and guns etc., etc.? Please give me some company for some revision if you think so. To me the most dangerous form of violence is within, in the mind in the form of ideas, emotions and thoughts. What we see in the form of broken heads and mangled bodies is just an outcome, a portion, of the volcano of the violence within, in ideas, thoughts, emotions and reflections. Do you think, given man’s penchant for expression of violence in physical form, man is more violent than woman? Please stay with me for some more moments if you believe so. Like they are suitable competitor to man in every field presently, women are no less in violence, if not exactly in the bloodied form, but certainly in the intensity of the violence within, the scheming volcano that smolders over the years. And it bursts suddenly. Quite unfortunately, the victims are fellow women only. It’s more so in conservative, traditional societies. In the ghettoized social space, where women are left suffocating for freedom, violence brews up a very nasty cocktail. It’s like hen fighting within the shitty cage. They cannot come out, so they fight. The historic sense of revenge accumulates and pours out to seek a target. As is the natural law, it seeks a soft target, and who is a softer target than a not-self-dependent woman in a conservative ghetto. And often it’s dirtier than a bloody bight. Nothing can match the violence of a female for her fellow species in traditional societies. It’s about the revenge, the plot, the scheming, a cycle of self-annihilation. In most of the crimes related to death, dowry and divorce in arranged marriages, the plot is hatched and aided by females. Generally, the victim of a violent female mind is another woman. The remedy lies in setting them free, a free run out of the cage of tradition and convention. The woman on the open platform of life are less violent in life. Or at least this is what I think. Thanks for being there.

Croakings of an old toad

We deserve our airy moments—little-little somersaults, froggy jumps over life's grounded roadblocks, tiny ballooned flights above the frictioned, rubbing realities on the surface. But we must not forget, we are terrestrial beings not the airy angels. So guys ensure that you land rightly on your feet after airy jaunts and not crash-land on your arse.

******

Staring at the misty past

and forcing myself not to see the future eager to unfold itself too fast,

I wave at the nostalgic strains still beckoning and faintly alive,

How I wish I could dive

back into the pools of the past,

To have my moments last

at a place that held me in its cradle soft,

That pious embrace which still holds me aloft!!

******

There is a tree in poor health. Its leaves dispirited, tabby and not fresh green. Its canopy hardly able to put shadow on the ground. It just waits for some storm to claim a natural calamity. You see somebody nurturing its leaves, pouring water and manure on them and dreamily look forward to greenish luxuriance. Of course it’s a folly. The problem lies in roots, not on the leaves. That’s how it’s with human lives. We look for the solutions on the surface, at the levels where the problems manifest themselves. Little do we realize that the root cause of such problem lies somewhere else. Those who get lynched by the diseased emotions of jealousy, hate, anger, frustration, insecurity and animosity have a problem deep within the self. These negative emotions are just like surface wavelets. If the interior is rooted in calmness, poise and control, such diseased leaves won’t sprout on the surface to take a toll on the physio-psychological health. In the depths of the sea, there is a calm world basking in the glory of bluish darkness that stays unmoved. On the surface there are storms and upheavals. The surface tosses and turns as if struck by some mad force. Disturbance is destined to die. But before it dies, it takes casualties like a pyre burns on firewood. Only peace and calmness can be permanent. And surprisingly calmness does not draw on any fuel to sustain its eternity. It’s self sustaining. There are no collateral damages. So isn’t it prudent to dive deep into the womb of serenity to be reborn as a serene child who is in control of his destiny? Submerge into the cool depths of your real, inner self. Explore your undisturbed waters. Its bluish darkness will light a lamp of self-realization. You will clearly see the funny part of surface storms and even laugh at yourself for having been so crazy in the shallow, muddied waters. Don’t waste this precious life in the muddied storms. The pearls of your destiny lie at depths. So brothers and sisters, raise your head above stormy waters, take in a huge breath, dive deep and shake hands with undisturbed waters where your real self awaits with the answers to all the root causes of the problems on the surface.

A day in the life of a peacock

Pre-monsoons have been kinder this year. Just at the beginning of the rainy season, the air is humid and clouds display teasing games of surprise and showers in the sky. For the last one week there is lull period though. It’s unbearably hot and humid. Mother is busy finishing the first-half chores for the day. The peacock lands in the courtyard with its riot of colours. It arrives with a small storm that airs the desultory weather. Unfortunately there are no chapattis left from last night supper. This particular peacock likes chapattis more than the grains. She knows it from her experience. It hardly put its beak into the grainy offerings in the past. Chapattis, on the other hand, it relishes almost like humans. She feels sorry for it. “There are no chapattis son!” But the feathered son follows her in the courtyard. She even tries to shoo it away so that it can reach some other door-step and beat its hunger at the earliest. It’s terribly hot and humid. The multi-coloured guest is panting. It cranes out its royal blue neck to search for the chapatti pieces. They aren’t to be found. It then follows mother to the innermost recesses of the house. It seems to have run out of its options in the wilderness. Pesticides in the surrounding farms. Hardly any option for the poor national bird. Hunger is a terrible pusher. It changes one from what one generally is. The fear of hunger is worse than most of the other fears. So the big bird, having run out of natural options, follows her. With panting beak, beating its natural instincts to be scared of the humans, it kow-tows her to grab the moment of her generosity. Her heart melts. “No chapattis today! And you don’t eat grains, but still try these today.” She puts a bowl of multiple grains including wheat and pulses. When you are really hungry, the choice and type of the food don’t matter. With quick beakfuls, even not caring to crane out its neck to ensure safety, the poor thing gulps down the grains. Mother looks sadly at it. “Poor thing isn’t cribbing about food.” It just wants to beat the hunger. Having eaten to its full, it takes some pecks in the water bowl left on the courtyard wall and swoops away with swooshing the air and glitter of its colours under the sun. It has ensured a day’s survival in a world where its next generation has almost no place. 

Farts of a village frog

There is an independent will pervading the universe, expanding with the cosmic expansion it elopes with the infinity. Its particles sneak into our subconscious mind, leading us in directions where we won't go consciously. No wonder our minds are such restless, unreined, unchecked horses. Thoughts just float around. It’s a chaos. Disorderly mess. The mind is the sea in constant upheaval. There are storms of thoughts, ideas and emotions. The challenge lies in taming the self, in building strong ramparts against the meteoritic onslaught of the rampaging soldiers of the universal free-will. The citadel of the self has to be strong to withstand the barrage. Once the meteoritic showers stop their random crash-landings in our brain, it will turn a cool, tranquil, peaceful and calm pond where one can see the real self reflected in crystal clear waters.

******

One minute of hate and anger comes at the cost of one hour deducted from life. Hate is the choice of the worst; love is the smilingly picked up gift of the best. The journey from the worst to the best doesn’t cross seven seas. It’s just an arms-length endeavour. You just let go hate from one hand and hold love delicately in the other. It just requires this much for the biggest transformation, from the worst to the best. Choose to be the best.

******

In the farthest fathoms of my being, a steady lamp is aglow with its soft mystical rays. I but kept on looking heavenwards for light and guidance, ignorant of the tiny torch carrying the cosmic flame within. Blinded by the worldly blaze outside, I fell headlong. Even the tiny inside lamp toppled and put heart on fire. Don’t worry guys, it gives just acidity. A bit of heartburn. Maya mili na ram--the end result!  

******

Two honeybees drowning in the water bucket. I take them out and they fly. Not just saving two lives, I create the possibility of an extra honey drop for this bitter world. Goodness is complete in itself. It doesn't need the outcome to qualify it. Do your good deed. It might be almost invisible, but it carries a positive outcome in some corner of the universe.  

******

Strong lies are better than weak truths. It’s nothing but about the support and confidence in your truth which can be different from someone else’s truth. Your truth is truth as long as it survives on the life-force of your trust in it. Strong lies are nothing but the tombstones and graves built on the dead truths buried safely for convenience.

******

After socialism you have to build capitalism. Ever saw anything more contradictory? Look at all the socialist societies. After the class wars and purgings, and decades of torture and robbing people of their free-will and independent choices, they plant the seeds of capitalism again. Why? Because there is simply no other way. Efforts at socialism are all like burning down the previous harvest, weeding out endlessly, tilling, breaking clods, preparing the seed-bed, only to plant the previous seeds again. Damn funny and tragic. If all this ends at the same point then why all this blood-bathing?

******

At least be a living room dissident. It saves the soul against the evil. This is just some practical advice to those struggling again undemocratic governments. For example democracy supporters in Hong King. It keeps the flame alive for more appropriate times.

******

Imagine a philosophy student working in a boiler-plant, or a pianist working on radio circuits. Such wonders are possible only in a communist society. It’s only about killing the freedom of mind and choking the spirits to mass produce zombies who don’t understand much about what human life is all about. Left-leaning Indian intelligentsia ought to be put to some manual labour to get the rust off their ideology-clogged brains.

******

"A communist is someone who's read Marx, an anti-communist is someone who's understood him."
Svetlana Alexievich

******

When it rains in Haryana, the most chilled out people are the electricity board for they cool their heels and bless us with 24 hour power cuts, always everywhere in the villages at least. Possibly the belief is that once blessed with rains the farmers don't need anything else in life. Anyway it doesn't pinch too much because even on the finest day we have at least 14-16 hours of power cut. Our CMs have changed but they are all comfortable with the power cuts at least. A very suitable agreement on certain policies, I see. It was the same under Chautala, Hooda and remains the same under Khattar. Possibly some things are better left unchanged.

******

Second-Hand Time by Svetlana Alexievich. The book is elegantly fat, white, hardbound and seductive. Lose yourself to its charms. It will open up the communist-time horrors of stifled emotions, imprisonment of the individual soul and loss of the natural ability to even make sense of what freedom is. Hope the caricatured Indian version of communism does some soul-searching after such revelations.

******

That which is best, the universe conspires to preserve it. Same is the case with Taoism. Uprooted from China, it will survive in India. Buddhism was India's best export. Taoism can be our best import.

The Elixir of Life

A look of hate snatches and steals a part of life; a look of love adds something good to life. A hateful thought kills; a thought of love saves life. Hate is the evil collaborator of death; love is the bright-smiled custodian of life. Nurture the good and the best in you. Like most of the things it can be practiced and learnt. Practice smile. It’s a small pill of wellness. Learn to look at things with love. Start with your food, water, whatever you drink, or whatever you eat. Before you eat or drink, take a minute’s pause and look at the thing, the instrument of life, the helper of your survivability, the soldier of your life, resting before you on the table. It’s there for you, to help you get strong and survive and live another day. At that moment there is no better friend to you in the universe. Accept its friendship and brotherliness. Embrace its camaraderie. As you chew, swallow and gulp it down, it will become a part of you. It’s something that will be you once you have it in your guts. The moments before being eaten, it becomes a sacred part of your extended self. Accept it. Look with love. Take it as a blessing from your guardian angel to help you beat the negative forces hankering after your demise. The food taken with such love and affection becomes the elixir of life.

Dumplings on a rainy day

There is no absolute truth. All we have is just a pliant, relatively swaying sea of fractional truths. We draw out our suitable share of tit-bits of truths from this sea to complement our sense of identity with the self, i.e., ego, self-consciousness, our perception of the things, our vision of the world and the people around.   

  

Women are humanist!! Almost perfect except one thing! Their humaneness crosses the zone of perfection and slightly touches an arena where bitchiness for their own sex starts in free flow. It is here the man's chance to appease his women opens up its welcoming arms. A man has to realise that it is more practical to say a few negatively critical remark about other women than millions of appreciating words about his woman!!

Happiness is when everything is soaked in rain in the morning and the diligent boy hands you a copy of dry newspaper. You feel like proclaiming him a champion and yourself a lottery winner. You just grab your slightly damp copy--newsprint is so soft that it soaks some moisture from the air itself, so the delivery boy cannot help in this--like a prized possession. Life is not about mountains of mighty triumphs. It's about tiny molehills of such small pleasures. Learn to be happy with scores of little, little strokes of luck that come your way on a daily basis. Simple mathematics is: At the end of the day, the sum total of our little fractions of luck is more than the big shitty stroke of bad luck. Appreciate your tiny sinews of luck for they tie the rope of your survival and sustenance. If not for them things can go wrong in as many ways as the vastness of this universe.
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In the burning whirlpools of the desert storm, some tears shed by a suffering heart vaporize and go high in the sky for rainy prospects. Don’t get senty guys, it’s just an airy oasis.
                                            ******************************************

Don't take victory for granted. She is a very choosy bride. She has her own, sometimes illogical, criteria to pick up the groom.
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A nuclear bomb undoes all other types of technical superiority in conventional warfare. Similarly, leaps in space technology will see a country undoing various technical superiorities in the hands of rival countries on land.
                                                     ***************************

To escape boredom, a man has to just extend his normal schedule; the same extension, which overlaps a woman's effort to tide over her boredom, turns her into a sinner.
                                                        **********************

The best compliment for my book Faceless Gods was by my friend's six-year-old daughter. 

Struggling to hold the fat book in her small hands, and lost in the dense text, she gave the expert review, "Uncle has got a very nice handwriting."
                                                           *****************

Truth need not be salted. Even in its bland form, it's more vocal than any well-peppered, politically correct, hypothetically safe and socially convenient cuisine.
                                                              ************

Bigot, watch out, there is poison in your plate!

My dear terrorist, I have a very simple question for you. Why does killing come so easy to you? Each and every breath of a newborn is literally purchased by its parents and wards in lieu of love, affection and care which go beyond any monetary value. Why then you simply get ready to sniff out lives, the very same lives which have been taken care of tirelessly and unselfishly by parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, relatives and friends.

Killings in the name of religion is what defines we earthlings as of now. Quite surprisingly, the fundamental tenets of every religion aim to make the followers better human beings, better not just for the self, but for others as well. Religious texts seem imploring a person to become an instrument of betterment, a heaver of humanity forward on its march to better days. The core of all religions is meant to be love and compassion. Why then so much of hate and blood-bathing in the name of religion?

The walk between good and evil is very dodgy and testing. Like a rope-walker is inclined to fall, with each step it’s about evading the fall. There is a natural pull for the fall. Only with each careful step and awareness one can move on. Goodness requires practice. It doesn’t come naturally. Meanness has its own instinctive, convenient outlet through the little channels of ego pervading through our self-consciousness. Hate has its own natural pull. It just shoots off, gathering its own force once let loose, like a boulder rolling downhill. In hate you can do anything; it’s a terrific ignition. In anger you can rant endlessly.

In contrast, in love and peace you have few options. Love is going uphill. You have to hold it in your heart. You have to carry its weight. You pant and perspire. Man, it needs effort, simply because it doesn’t come naturally. Thousands of years of struggle to survive has genetically ingrained fear, insecurity and hate in the core of our being. Slightest trigger and the arrow is shot. Mention love and how many words you can speak out. Call of good deeds to be done around, you will twiddle your hair to find anything good to do around. Now mention hate, anger and destruction. And you have the options scattered around you to carry out ranging from verbally abusing somebody, slapping, screaming, breaking heads, throwing bricks to even killings.

Religion in practice is like the bamboo in the hands of a rope-walker. It is meant to stop the fall. It is supposed to prevent your fall with each step. It does so by making you aware of being good. So you take another step, then another and then another to complete the journey.

The religion in the hands of bigots doesn’t remain religion at all. It’s a poisoned pill. Condemn it in direct terms without fiddling with diplomatic maneuvering and falling in the clutches of impotent concept like secularism. Bigots are just simple mismanagers of religion. Throw them out of their authoritative seat. Hold them by their neck, kick them on their ass and spit on their version of religion that ordains killing innocent people. Not only they force a fall from the rope of life, they kill the soul. They kill the soul by sidelining love and replace it with hate. It imprisons the soul. It is skin deep addiction for some abnormal gratification of the sense. It pampers the evil side of the personality. There is always a choice to be either good or bad. It robs one of this natural choice. Only dark force with its ghosts of hate, jealousy, anger, insecurity and frustration remain in the fray. It grips you and makes you an instrument of the evil, a foot-soldier of chaos. You don’t see the light from within. You are a blinded, crazy robot, ready to strike. And when you strike you just kill, without bothering about who you are killing. They are mostly innocents.

When a child, who understands religion no more than the alphabets in her books, is killed in the unsparing spool of violence, what lines in the book of bigotry can justify the deed? When innocent people out for shopping, going to office and out there on the small stage of life get killed, which God in which heaven is appeased? If He is appeased, then to the hell with such a God!

Bound feet, mutilated genitalia and clipped wings

Women had to fight a long battle to reach the level of swimsuit and the leisure of swimming. Buried under multiple layers of yards of skirts, great-skirts, bonnets and gloves any attempt to lighten the burden was taken as a sign of doubtful morality. During the Victorian era, the swimwear was more cumbersome than what the modern woman wears in sub-zero temperatures. It was not until some decades back that female swimwear became something of a legitimate leisure activity. Mind you, the man had been doing the same since the conceiving of the so called civilization.

The most powerful country in the world, the United States of America, granted voting rights to the contributors of its development only in 1920. The first semblance of democracy dates back to ancient Greece. In England the roots date a good thousand years back. So the voting right came at least 1000 years late.

Men were flying planes for a good 30 years when the first females cracked the hard shell of cockpit glass and broke though rocky minds to set wings to the flight of their dreams.

Education and intellect, the timeless right of the men, let loose its first showers of knowledge and empowerment on women just during the last fifty years. The history of knowledge and its pursuit date back 3500 years. Even now it’s just in infancy in many parts of the world.

Female genital mutilation, removal of some or all of external genitalia, to tame the so called presumed rampant sexual desires in women. The sexual freedom that man enjoyed, taking it a moral act for him and immoral for her. It was his rightful pleasure and her sin. Now  the chains are breaking. A long battle to go for though, because sex for man is natural. For the woman it is still a scandal.   

In China, for one thousand years they bound women’s feet since early infancy with dozens of feet long strips of clothes to check feet growth. It was for the famed four inch feet, the symbol of docility, tameness and civility, of being gloriously feminine. They bent the toes inwards and tied layers of clothes to crush and break the bones slowly and painfully over the years to keep the feet from growing beyond four inches, the limit after which a woman became almost unacceptable and uncivilized and shameful. Women hopped like unassertive, vulnerable creatures. It was the walk of a willow switch swaying to spring breeze to arouse the men. They wore silken embroidered baby shoes over bound feet. Inside flesh rottened and sores festered. The famed Chinese beauty with bound feet of a baby did service to the patriarchy for 1000 years before the practice stopped in 1920s.

In my state of Haryana, we have 7000 village settlements. In my memory of the last 20 years, there have been 5 honor killings in my village. The girls’ crime was just as simple as pursuing--once in a lifetime--a freedom which any men or boy does every day throughout their lives. They fell in love. Nothing wrong with that. Everybody does. The only difference was that they allowed it to blossom. Survival and chastity meant subduing it the moment it sparked. Otherwise it was an unpardonable sin. The punishment death ordained by society and ignored and looked over by the state. Their sin? They went out with a boy, talked to him, went to some eating point with him, and thus brought this shame to the family. The society would expect hit-back from the disgraced family to salvage honor. And of course they did. A quiet strangulation, a still quieter cremation, and a quietest society. Gone. She earned it, everybody seemed to agree. Taking 5 honor killings per settlement during the last 20 years, the traditional society of Haryana has progressed with the killings of at least 35000 honor killings. Now when I see the freedom enjoyed by boys and girls, enjoying innocent pleasures like talking to each other, going for coffee and burgers and movies, I realize it has been a silent revolution. There are unnamed, unseen martyrs. I count them to be 35000 in my state during the last two decades.

The bloody wheels of exploitation are taking women further to the next milestone in their journey.          

As the human juggernaut moves from brawn to brain, there is an inevitable shift in gender roles. The traditional muscle-dominated bastion of males is melting. It’s more about smartness and management now wherein females are better placed to excel given centuries of biological traits sharpened in managing things despite greatest odds.  

All things go in circles. In the beastly fight to survive in the jungles, we started with an all male dominated scenario. Now we are moving towards parity and equality in gender functions in making a society and driving the economy and pulling the technology. On further progression on the path in the circle, the role of women will overtake that of men. And rightly so. They have earned it. It has been a bloody battle for thousands of years.

Harmless hornets, biteless bees and beggar peacock

Large yellow paper wasps, one of the stinging hornets, defended their nests with a single-minded determination. Stinging winged chivalry! Attack! Their primal instinct! Well that was almost three decades back when we ran helter-skelter as the winged yellow striker, twitched its antenna, its dull black points of eyes stared before striking. Children cried with pain. Next day a joker with a swollen face would provide free entertainment.

So much so for the wild instinct! There were still remaining some traces of wilderness in the countryside. Wild is what? It’s just to be natural. But then having turned the wilderness upside down, trading it with the civilized onslaught, we humans are restlessly marching ahead. There is a stampede and many species are getting trampled in the dust below. The wilderness gone. Most of the species have lost their footing as the terribly over-bloated and glutinous super-species, man and womankind, firmly hold the reins of the chariot of nature. Everything has changed. The wilderness vanishing, so is the mundane ‘wild’ streak in birds, animals and insects. It’s a tamed world in tamed humanized environs.

Coming back to the yellow foe of our childhood. They held their positions, defended their share in nature, struck lips, cheek, nose and forehead to defend their fortifications. The punished swollen face of the linage of Homo sapiens bearing a testimony to the fact that he is not the only claimant to the cakes of Mother Nature. Things have come upside down since then. As the human juggernaut moves on, mowing down the last traces of wilderness, species are losing their primal instincts, just to buy some more time before the inevitable extinction. It’s an acceptance, a sort of death-bed time’s letting go of any signs of further struggle. A final surrender, a soulful resignation.

The yellow hornet doesn’t bite now. Somehow stealing out some niche in the not so impressive corner of the house, where they are not a blot on the household decorum, surviving there like some beggar on the pavement, they simply don’t bite. The sentinels don’t rush at your nose even when you raise a cobweb cleaner in the nest’s direction. The instinct of survival seems to have taught them a lesson that they cannot afford to mess with the bi-pedaled torch-bearer of the onslaught on nature.

I commit the error of still linking honeybees to the notorious chivalry of those comb-defenders we witnessed during childhood. They don’t bite anymore. Forget about flowers, they have to run greedily for the semi-arid shoots of acacia. It’s scorching heat and honeybees buzz around the water bucket. It’s man’s offering. It’s no wild stream bordered with wild flowers where they can lay claim their share of nature and defend their fort. The bucket is man’s creation. So they don’t bite. They sense that it’s man’s beneficence and kindness that they are still surviving. I put my hand among a swarmful of honeybees stuck up around the corners of the bucket. Nostalgia strikes. I still remember those bites and swollen limbs. Well that is history. They just fly away. In a struggle to grab the last survival sips in a world that has no place for them anymore, they have forgotten to strike. The confidence is gone. They don’t have any rights anymore. That’s what happens when you just survive and not live. Only woman and mankind are living, others are just surviving. They will definitely become extinct. Then it will the human’s time to struggle, survive and get extinct. (Before that of course humans will desperately try to artificially replace whatever nature, in combination with countless other species, has bestowed them with. The stage is getting set for the evolution of a new species—some unthinkable woman-machine combination.)

The peacock, a riot of colours, is in double mind. With its cute eyes it stares at me. The wilderness in it is admonishing of a danger. It takes a step back. But where can it to fly back to. It’s a migrant in the village. The countryside is saturated with insectsides and pest control chemicals. So there is nothing for it to feed upon there. I understand its helplessness. So take some more steps forward with chapatti pieces in my hand. I know it’s hungry. It won’t fly away. The peacock has accepted its fate and so have all others. Except humans, of course.

The Old Moon and the Imperiled Landscape

It was very cold and the time was frozen around half an hour before the morning twilight on January 13, the day celebrated as Lohri; a day before Makar Sakranti on the full moon next day. The pallid rays of a pale moon had grown old so soon during the last hour before the morning twilight. The night had been chilly, clear-skied, frosty and fogless: an exceptional January night, not in chill, but in being clear certainly. The moon, just a day away from its fullness, had been exceptionally bright.

Nightlong, almost near the peak of its rounded beauty, it had fulfilled its luminous duty. Its milky beams over-rode the pointed shafts of light from the distant stars. After all it was his world; the stars had their own at mammoth astronomical distances. The moon was thus the brightest, bulbous star, eager to brush out every strain and tainting, shadowy tar. Its beams spread like snows over the sleeping horizons into the sleepy distances and languorous miles.

The beautiful countryside was lying in sleepy abundance under the chilly, milky blanket with slumberous pride. Everything was open to the celestial torch with nothing to hide. Cold-basking fields were huddled under their croppy sheets. Above was gloating the marvelous moonshine. Wheatlings stood bow-headed in reverence with dewy crowns fine. The marigold flowers were frozen in kissed silence by the milky showers. The flowers happy to surrender their colours to the lover’s mysterious smiles and disrobing powers. White pea flowers boasted their augmented whiteness. Aha, such dolefully beneficent had been the moony brightness. Even the trees did not appear merely dark specters lurking shadowishly over the horizon. They appeared boats of foliage floating in a misty sea.   

In the background of such a brightly lit stage even the sky seemed earth-lorn. Through the milky transparency, its bluish-dusky veil lurked and through it only the brightest stars smiled and showed that there was a world beyond as well. Scattered in the docile swathes of this moon-baked countryside, the villages seemed as mammoth ships silently floating in the white wavy sea of light.

At this moment the moon was well past its prime, as if in shining too bright, to use the full charms of a fog-free night, it had committed a harmless crime. Its setting quarters lay in the north-west, from where it was eager to move for some rest. Its strength and vigour had drastically plummeted down. Paleness eating into the guts of its plump milky brightness. An old, setting moon, away from the youth’s boon. Dislodged of its shiny crown, it ogled with a meek, even irritated, anguished, helpless frown. Its sheen was rapidly fading out. Its yellowish pale rays almost eager for a wailing shout. Glumly it was fading over that reddish-brown sandy undulation carrying fields, furrows and crops on its gently unfolding dome. The shiny fruits born of sweat-drenched hours by the farmers in its sandy loam. Accusingly the moon threw pale, protesting shadows in the south-east. There urbanism, consumerism and crass commercialism blatantly, proudly held its seat commanding metropolitan, capitalist feast.

The area had been earmarked for some development project. It now being defined by a tiny space bound in a map issued under the state government’s gazette notification. A mischief by the developmental hand. Ever eager to bulldoze over the nature and turn it into uncomplaining, lifeless sand where lustrous stones will be built over the nature’s burial. Heartless, wanton and depraved! But the nature has no oratory to baulk the words. It but repays in kind.

This pale, mournful moon was preparing to set soon into the misty gloom of the twilight. A new bright sun of consumerism and commerce will be ascending to its dawning height. And the soft natural delicacies will scamper with fright.

Those reed stalks which swayed to the cold shove of a gentle breeze without any greed appeared to say good-bye to the moon. The latter plummeted down further with a bloated face and a sigh. Its pallid face grimacing with a painful nostalgia. Its fading, setting rays tainted with a peculiar dullness, the death, the demise, the oblivion. Its oblong teary face looking down at the landscape. Sleepy fields, beneficent swathes of wastes and fallow lands.

Mighty lessons were taught here by nature to itself and all. The farmer going to the fields with his gear. Those long, painful and oftentimes fruitless days subsided when the sun’s eager rays looking at the sweaty trove and the shirt’s hoe. Where the long, brooding nights arrived like the deeds accomplished. Where the failures galore but the hard work was never a bore. The failures defined the success as the losses stood just as a testimony to the profits. Where the hopes, aspirations and desires varied with the changing hues of the weather. The farmers pawning everything for the feathers in destiny’s crown. Gold forming immaterially—or minimally at the rate of a dust speck for tons of sweat—in the toiled soil reddish brown.

All this will be gone. The moon was also dying with a moan. This charming mystery of the landscape: why hardest labour fetches minimal returns; why a bit less harder toil results in a soul-satisfying speckful of return that seems the wealthiest load. All these beautiful, aesthetic, curvy, circuiting strings, the mysteries of the landscape, of destiny, of the see-saw battle between happiness and suffering, between pleasure and pain, between penury and sustainable as well as gluttonous gain, between life and death, between a smile and a tear, all will be lost.

Everything will be gone for a direct, straight, materially penetrating needle of surety: the commercial, unflinching and fixed use of the landscape in a concrete form where profits will boomerang in proportion to the short-cuts; where compromised humanity, ideology and conscience will not face any ifs and buts; where there won’t be any sweet scent of labour which will be replaced by mechanical, greasy, muddy panting of merciless competition and mad grab; where concrete blocks and apartments will replace these wondrous solitudes and petalous platitudes basking in unrestrained, free, natural air; where sheaves, stalks, straw and reeds will not sway to the breeze, but blank, rigid, ironed towers will stand mutely, inflexibly to the nature’s cooing calls from increasing distances.

Now the sorrowfully yellowing death rattle of the setting time was arriving with a finishing chime. There on the opposite horizon, the day opened a window to sneak a peek at the imperiled room of the night. Wispily, there was the twilight with its mixed day-night delight. In its mysterious lap, the old moon met a slightly premature death, slumped as it feebly, freely into the silvery sea of the mist hung over the tree-line. Slithered it into the sea of death and plunged into invisibility.

The twilight mischievously winked with its unfaithful, teasing look, asking favours both from the night and the day. The old moon was gone with its last ray. And the soon-to-be-doomed panorama, unmindful of the fatality in wait, came out of its dewy slumber. A crane’s clarion call cree…ked over its yawning bosom. The sun prepared to cast its first ray. The fields got up for another hard farming day.

White blood and soldiers of peace

Please read this with a smile on your lips.

You may be in bad mood having argued with your husband or boyfriend. You may have been struggling to find the dress you are looking for in your messed up wardrobe. You might even be running around the house to meet multiple assignments to manage children and your presentation still not finalized. Wait, please do all this with a smile! It won’t disturb your schedule in any way. It’s a humble request like I ask you to take a harmless sip of water even if you don’t feel thirsty at the moment. A reasonless smile can be taken as simply as you merely take a sip of water.

Did it? Now please be honest and tell the relief it got you. A smile to the self, without any calculation, without any reason, without any expectance of results and rewards, miraculously makes you feel better. Instantly! Isn’t it wonderful? Do it and you know instantly what I mean. It’s like a corner of dark cloud on an overcast, freezing day parts and a life-soaked shaft of light falls over you, transporting you to blanketfuls of warmth and solace.         

Laughter is the best medicine, they say. Laugh to the capacity of your guts, but please don’t underestimate a smile. In strange ways it’s is therapeutic to the ever-wheezing, fretting and fuming brain machinery. It simply, without any exuberance and pretentions, releases tension and stress from the whirring machine that your brain is. It’s a coolant like you have in your car engine to stop it from burning red with fury.

Hush away your neutral face expression. Being expressionless is as good as bearing a wooden head. You can smile even when you don’t have to. It is contagious. Other cells in the body cascade down the message of well-being. It’s such a positive force. Smile is not just a cute expression around the lips of a cool person. It carries a healthy dose of happiness. Just curve your lips wherever you are right now, be it driving, walking back home after a stressful day in office, sitting alone in a cafeteria over a mug of coffee, jostling in a crowded metro, tucked in your bed, watching your favorite programme  on TV or talking to somebody. And you instantly get your medicine to be better. For free, girls! Grab it.

Quite wonderfully, you need not have a reason to smile. As the muscles around the corners of your lips get into an imperceptible crease taking your cheeks for a delicate contortion to make you look still better, you immediately feel a release of anxiety and stress from the heated chamber that our brain is. Simple fact is: when you smile, even when just doing it out of simple aloofness like somebody told you to have one more sip of water even if you aren’t thirsty, you let loose a healthy trail of endorphins into your blood. This chemical is a carrier of happiness. It’s as much potent, happy and healthy you feel while running.

If you carry the molecules of smile around your lips, it sends out positive vibes about your personality, that you are happy and firmly in saddle and in control of your life. It helps in interpersonal relations. It oils your professional pursuits. There are too many rivals in this unsparing competitive world. With a face inclined to smile, you will have some less rivals head-butting you in the game that life is. More importantly, every face in the world is incomplete without a smile. Even the most beautiful face can still go a notch higher with a smile.  

Ok, accepted that you are darn attractive and you take good care of yourself. You wear stylish clothes, have matte foundation, lip gloss and eye liner in the safest reach to support your charm. Wait, there is something freely available that can instantly take you to be the most adorable princess around. Just elongate your lips horizontally, very softly, allowing your cute cheeks to delicately undulate. It’s a smile lady! It’s the best tool on your dressing table. No beauty is perfect without a smile.

Apart from the glowing star that you become with a smile, the symbolic derivates are even more important. You look caring, empathetic, trustworthy, better leader, dependable companion and easy going. Apart from the glorious take-aways mentioned above, a smile increases white blood cells which make you stronger. Hidden inside your soft, considerate and caring persona topped with a smile, you become a strong and confident persona inside. A smile just digs the foundations of your firmness physically and mentally. It goes deeper and deeper.

Have a frown on your face and see the results. Even the liftman won’t salute with enthusiasm. Well before it oils someone’s insecurity, it harms your own system by increasing the toxics which generate stress and anxiety. With a smile you are more approachable and sociable. And opportunities have this tendency, like water has of flowing down to the lower levels, to rush after such persons.

The people in the world might be banging and clattering to beat and surpass each other for self aggrandizement. But still a cute soldier shielding his face with a smile instead of the iron mask of fretting rigidity and grimace is more welcome. This world will still be competitive but it won’t be a bloody fight and broken teeth and broken bonds. It will be a pleasant game. It will be beyond winning and losing. It will just be. Try this in office, at home, in trains. Just smile to yourself. Simple! It’s a cozy, comfortable bulb that you light up. After dispelling the gloom from some corner of your soul, it will spread into the shady zones into the beings of those around you. And they need it. This tiny flicker emanating from you can become a beacon of hope for someone who needs it.  

Forget the awkwardness and tension that strikes you due to the challenges thrown by situations. You might be waiting for your interview, your heart beating violently. You might be terribly inclined to lose it because the queue in bank isn’t moving. A frown will not make things go easy for you. But a smile can. Try this now. You will feel the effect.

For a change do something without any logic. Just smile!

Be a superwoman and world beater in your own ways

Don’t do everything just for money, rewards, recognition, name and fame. As we feel, most of our doings are just blind pursuits for something more important expected at the end of the doing. Doing thus becomes secondary, the outcome. The reward takes the centre stage, and everything before that turns a stale, perspiring, frustrating struggle. The process of doing becomes traumatic. By subjugating the process of doing to the unknown outcome in the future, we pawn the happiness and intrinsic satisfaction, which simply doing could have been, against the shifting, blinding mirage on the hot sands in future. Try to make doing primary. It’s like casting the chains away and lightens your burden. Not only it will light up your soul, the outcomes, whether you care about them or not, will just follow with a bang. If you do something just for some specific outcomes, it’s not doing, rather it’s some barter against the drops of your sweat. It’s labour, a menial work, mere slogging. You are not the master. Just try to do a few things without caring for the material and social rewards. You will know that you own the act of doing. It becomes pure and unadulterated. You own it and you are the master of it. Once you master something, given the potential human soul has, the byproducts will drop like sweat autumn windfalls, ripe, without any effort. That is the cascading effect pure doing does. There are hundreds of posts on this blog. I write not for viewership stats or adsense money. My reward is the numerous trophies I gather while simply writing. I write because I love doing it. There is no bigger reward than being able to do something you really love and like doing. A very small publisher trusts me and publishes my books. He likes my writing and invests some money to publish my books. I help him to the little extent that I don’t take any royalties. My books sell in just hundreds of copies, rarely touching the four figure mark. And even for that I don’t expect any royalty. Still I write for months to complete a book. Simple thing is I just love doing it. As I work on my books, without any restraints on publisher- and commerce-ordained limitations, I feel like flying in an open sky. It’s like being a painter having a completely empty canvas and possessing all the options to experiment with colours and shapes. This is what you get, the rewards, your breath of freedom, your space and your happiness. Every moment is like holding a big trophy. And believe me, if you immerse in doing something just for the sake of doing it to the core, you warp space-time continuum to the tune and frequency of your doing, and rewards follow, whether you accept these or not is another matter. Most importantly, the doings that bring instant soul-sweetening sense rarely give you money and material rewards. Helping a stranger, who has lost her wallet on a crowded platform, with a hundred rupee bill that can help her save hell lot of trouble; stopping to take an old hand and help him to cross the road; taking a stranded stray puppy out of the drain; a smile from an unknown face just because you did only this much to keep the elevator door open, helping her to catch onto the precious moment, etc., etc. The feeling you get instantly is sufficient to overpower any vanity of earning millions and getting gold medals. Most importantly, such small, small doings help you hone the humanity in you. Just like you pump iron in gym to harden your muscles, such little, little acts of just doing without expecting any rewards will hone the muscles of your conscience. Goodness can be practiced. It can be made a habit. Begin with such small things where your egoistic, self-driven work flow won’t revolt to begin with. Very soon you will turn out to be the best of a human being. And who is a good human being? Well, basically she is happy.

Cancer and Tumors in Earth

You run after a thing, struggle and toil for it to the chronic pain of your bones, and much deservedly you land up at the destination. You have achieved your thing. It’s the time to cherish its worth, its value for you. It’s time to celebrate and pause and allow the feeling to sink in. What value the victory carries if you cannot even spare the time and pause to allow the feeling seep into the perspiring pores of your skin, taking cool calmness reach to the limits of your soul. But it almost never happens. The pause, the rest is ever elusive. You achieve your target and the thing turns out to be valueless. The things, goals and destinations that you get and achieve and reach become almost valueless the moment you nail it. It’s always a struggle for the future. And it’s never living in the present. The dream value, which was earlier carried by the things and destinations where you stand now, shifts again to some another milestone in future. So again we drop our present and run after the future. The futile chase: the mirage keeps on shifting on the hot sands of our bloodied battle. And we run, madly, trampling the things and the moments which are the only possessions we have in reality and could have enjoyed, and rush for future, for things in mind, in the form of ever-escaping criteria of values, goals and destinations. No wonder, we never live our present by enjoying the victories and rewards our sweat has fetched us. We abandon the real rewards. We trample the true trophies of the present. You get the thing and it loses its value. No surprise that we feel so deprived, poor, cheated, underachieved and unhappy at the end of the journey when we fall. We hate any talk of pause in life. Little do we realize a restless run results in a fatigued, huffing fall at a time when legs cannot carry anymore and eyes fail and heart gives in. A run or a walk is well managed with intervals of pause and rest at the milestones we cross. It reinvigorates you for the next leg of the journey. Pause is blissful. It gives you the beautiful gift of accepting your present. A man, an animal, a vehicle, a civilization all need pause at intervals to maintain the journey, to save a fatigue and burnout. Unfortunately that is what we are not doing. Individually and collectively, we are headed down the precipice. The mad onslaught of modern civilization, with its plunder of natural resources and unchecked technological growth, needs a pause, for survival, for continuation of the journey. We are far advanced down the technological lane. Let’s pause now. First allow the horizontal spread of the utilities and benefits to the poorest of the poor. Let’s put a pause on population growth rates, exploitation of natural resources, scientific spurts and industrial productions. The modern civilization has gone too far with its unchecked growth. Unchecked growth is self-destructive. It’s nothing but cancer. The planet is carrying a cancer now. It needs to be checked. Let there be a pause, please. 

Roaming the planet to look for something which is safe in your pocket

Hi, this is somebody who has taken the quieter by-lane to be happy. The hustle and bustle of the big, booming main street is intimidating with the added risk that I may well forget myself after being lost in the crowd. As you walk in the crowd, the monotony and anonymity takes over. You lose the charm of life in doing the same things others are doing. You don’t feel the kick in solving the same problems using the same old, oft-repeated methods. The solutions also are boringly the same, the results also the same. And happiness ever looks at the farthest end of the planet or even beyond. The long and winding chains of the preconditions to be met, before you trudge nearer to the ever-elusive happiness, are spooling on and on: the dangerous mathematics of infinitely long factors and functions of happiness. I will be happy if I top, then you top, ok let me grab the best job, you get it, ok let me be the best CEO, you become one, then more. Then your children have to be the same or even more to take you to the still elusive dream of happiness. More money, more power, more prestige. Then there are others in the fray who can turn you unhappy even after you have overturned the records set out for yourself. There is no stopping. And hence no happiness. The problem is if your happiness is not within you from the beginning and lies at some goal-post in future at a distance, there are millions, trillions, zillions and even more open-ended factors that affect, mathematically scuttle your chances of a win. Forget it. It’s futile chase. The more we run after conditional happiness, the more we push it away from ourselves. The fundamental mistake is that we expect happiness to be the fruit on the tree of our efforts, i.e., the result, the fructification. No, it simply isn’t. It is the root of the tree of our endeavors, where we begin from, which lasts from the beginning to the end. If it’s not in the beginning, forget it, it won’t appear later. It has to be there before you begin. And the state of being happy can be habituated. Practice it as a daily routine, like you pump iron to tone your six and eight packs. Nurture the habit of just feeling happy, causeless and reasonless. Just smile when you are alone. Please try it and you will know what I mean. It lets loose a cascading effect driven by the hormones triggered by the movement of the muscles around the corner of your lips. Try it. Close your eyes and just smile. Unconditionally. You will feel how comforting it can be just to be happy. The fruits will follow later as you slog it out in the battlefield. It’s a simple verb, being so, a simple act, a solacing function. We but treat it as an intimidating noun in the future, interpolate it as success and achievements, the fruits at the end of the tunnel, the light at the end of the tunnel. It but is the lamp which is within you when you are in the dark. The path to happiness can never pass through the stages of unhappiness and struggle. It’s the present in continuation. Remove all future components from the equation of your happiness. So passing through the quieter by-lane, not stomped and nudged by the teeming crowds, I intend to reach a solitary path, laid out just for me, to reach my destiny, to be happy primarily, and enjoy the fruits of being happy.  All in all, I just practice the art of being happy unconditionally.